I have a dream... that one day arma3 players have real world data terrains for all the worlds interesting conflict areas!

Several weeks ago I got an idea to grab many large real world data terrains, just to learn the tool pipeline and fine tune my terrain making skills aka get some experience. boy was I clueless of what I'm getting myself into...

This huge project was not planned to be as normal public release, the plan was to do this just for my own fun but since the project started to develop I've grown so fond with these real world terrains and feel like there has been much worse releases in the community over the years, so I'm open to suggestions.

Also Ice in discord arma #terrain_makers channel mentioned I should release some large terrain for people to try out on, that was sort of like the opening salvo for this project's possible public releases. but again, I never planned any public releases, that is not why I'm doing this.

I want to do really large terrains with low details kind of like VBS or TOH South Asia terrain style. I want freedom. don't get me wrong I dont specifically "want" low details, but its a compromise. Point was to get real world heightmap + satellite + OpenStreetMap roads, then manually (obviously) place few buildings and try to use terrain processor with OSM shapefiles to place vegetation objects.

The extremely limited number of building or other populated place objects and as-is maps.google satellites is the reason why these terrains are not considered "normal public release" worthy. maybe some of these grow and get developed more but that is only if I fall in love of some of these and want to spend such time placing objects, tweaking satellite mask etc.

143km and 81km satellites are 2 meter / pixel, 40km is normal 1 meter / pixel. I'm thinking of redownloading 81km satellites as 1m/px as since starting this project I've discovered I can do those sizes without any problems.

Here is the complete terrain list which all are 143km unless stated otherwise:

Whats done? well all the source data has been downloaded except libya, I have fully working and in-game; baghdad, basrah, erbil, hillah, karbala, kirkuk and ghazni (plus the test 8192 02 terrain which is 81km snippet from benghazi). it takes forever to process these files so I'm still downloading libya satellite textures with terra incognita and cant do that + global mapper export + terrain builder / binarize work at the same time, my computer runs out of CPU cores and RAM

On a sad note my hard disk drive is full so I cannot proceed until get more free space either by deleting old stuff (no no no) or purchasing new minimum of 4tb disk. how messed up is that only thing preventing me to fullfill my terrain dreams is hdd space? hehe

My global mapper dir was in first week of March 230gb (913 files, 44 dirs), terra incognita dir 46.6gb (3,510 files, 50 dirs) its cache dir 30.3gb (2,913,595 files, 330dirs) and SRTM heightmap dir 4.79gb (111 files, 49dirs). I cant say what terrain builder project dirs are as there are so many in two namespaces and mixed with my other older projects. all this is total of roughly 311gb (not including P: stuff)

This project has already helped me to discover so much from the terra incognita -> global mapper -> qgis -> imagemagick -> terrain builder -> pboproject tool pipeline it is incredible. it has already been well worth the effort and I feel like this project is just starting heh.

When flying AH-6 Littlebird above the iraq kirkuk (I think) mountains I was just blown away of the awesome sights and scale. I knew right away that there is no turning back for me, arma3 large real world data terrains are must have.

So there you have it, another insane terrain story from PMC sekret codelabs! if you have any questions or suggestions (other than "don't do it" haha) I'm very happy to hear

PMC Iraq, Erbil v0.1 (erbil currently conflicts with afghanistan ghazni and iraq baghdad, so you need to run them separately. this has been fixed for next update).PMC Iraq, Hillah v0.1PMC Iraq, Karbala v0.1PMC Iraq, Kirkuk v0.1

While testing I noticed small bug in iraq erbil terrain, it conflicts with afghanistan ghazni and iraq baghdad, if you load all our terrains afghanistan ghazni disappears from arma3 due bad $PBOPREFIX$ so you have to load either ghazni/baghdad or erbil.

You can still load erbil separately so it wont conflict with others.

This have been already fixed in my developer version and will show up on the next release. I wont be doing hotfix release because this doesnt prevent from anyone using the terrains and the hotfix would be rather large.

Also forgot to mention earlier (it has now been added to first post), aghanistan ghazni requires CUP Terrains Core because it uses some takistani village and vegetation objects. Was doing preliminary testing with terrain processor how to place takistani vegetation.

Note: arma3 mission editor menu (picturemap_ca) and this promo image is very dark, however the actual satellite texture in-game is with similar brightness/contrast as the others. picturemap_ca will be fixed for next version.

Today I ordered WD 4tb hard disk because I'm running out of free space, when that hdd arrives I can continue creating these terrains without limitations. Currently I'm trying to juggle one terrain at the time always deleting old work files to maintain at least some free space, its horror.

phase 1 base terrais; heightmap, satellite texture, openstreetmap.org (OSM) roadsphase 2 heightmap fixes; airfields leveled, oceans need to be made deeper than 0m, some parts of terrain are also -1 to 0m elevation\\phase 3 class names, keypoints, city / area names for mapview (many random missions use class names to pick locations)phase 4 completing osm roads; some / many osm roads dont work in arma3 as there are too many of them, reduce or create from scratchphase 5 objects vegetation; bushes, trees and rocks. using shapefiles and terrain processorphase 6 objects buildings; its impossible to create all cities by myself, but at least military bases and some houses

Today I have decided to put "feature freeze" on adding any new terrains. I can add new terrains to the "planned" list but the "active" list which I'm currently editing over the next few days, is now in lockdown.

Few more terrains got added to the active list before today's feature freeze decision.

Six new PMC real world data terrains has been released! Phase 1 is complete!

PMC Afghanistan, Jalalabad v0.2 for ArmA 3.

Please note that original 143km terrain was redesigned (or reshaped / shrunk) into 81km in size and Asadabad (81km) was split off from it.

If you like the original 143km terrain, it is still available from original download if you know the torrent magnet link, but the old 143km terrain will be removed forever within one week.

This redesign was done because Asadabad historically was well worth to split off into its own more detailed terrain.

PMC Pakistan, Abbottabad 81km v0.1 for ArmA 3.

PMC Balkans, Belgrade v0.1 for ArmA 3.

PMC Balkans, Kosovo v0.1 for ArmA 3.

PMC Balkans, Montenegro v0.1 for ArmA 3.

PMC Balkans, Vojvodina v0.1 for ArmA 3.

First post updated.

This will complete phase 1 which is base terrain heightmap, satellite texture/mask and openstreetmap roads. We are in "feature freeze" regarding adding new terrains at least until phase 2 is completed.

Phase 2 is under way. Yesterday I took iraq al kut and baghdad and leveled terrain elevations on those airfields, just tested in-game and you can takeoff / land aircrafts fine on the even terrain.

This heightmap elevation editing phase will take a while, I'm also realizing that the sheer amount of gigabytes these terrains take that I'm not going to release new versions between the difference phases because for example adding location names (keypoints) is mere config edit and doesn't justify releasing whole terrain. And no, I'm not going to make any tiny cfg only updates either.

Because my hard disk space problems I deleted all the temp-work files so now I have to generate layers (chop satellite to small tiles), convert layers\*.png to paa and finally binarize to in-game use before terrain is ready for release. This is a huge process and usually I can get done maybe about 2 terrains a day, so yeah we are looking weeks if not month+ workload again.

Also this time I have to take more relaxed approach to this, I cannot edit 24/7 because I would definitely burn out and that is no fun for anyone.

Looking at the phase design, most likely I combine phase 2 - 4 for the next (first) update.

Phase 2 is taking longer than I thought because generate layers, convert layers\*.png fast and binarization process. This is roughly two terrains per day. However once all terrains go through this process once in my new HDD then things speed up as there is only binarization required when new updates are done and even that is quicker because rvmat's are already binarized etc.

All terrains where I found any airfields have now been leveled / smoothed so aircrafts can takeoff and land. Most likely I missed some smaller / harder to see airfields / airstrips, but those can be leveled later.

This means that the heightmaps are now leveled in terrain builder, it is completely different matter to compile the terrains into arma3 pbo's and release them which takes a lot of time. So while "they are done" is technically true, it doesn't mean there will be releases anytime soon.

I will re-design iraq tikrit, kirkuk, sulaymaniyah and nasiriyah as 81km, meaning shrinking their size from 143km down to 81km to avoid the nasty overlap due my initial bad design decisions. Also will move al kut just slighly to the east.

Also I'm going to create one pure iraqi desert 143km terrain to keep all jets dlc guys satisfied, although 81km x 81km terrains are larger than any community released terrains (with obvious few exceptions). So saying 81km terrain is too small for jets is... well rather silly

There are few other iraqi terrains that overlap, but as of now I'll try to ignore those as they are not so bad.

This week there is no real changelog updates to report as most was spent on fixing terrain builder projects that got broken during my hard disk drive purchase.

What happened was that I moved my stuff from one partition to another but still keeping all the remaining file paths. All seemed to work well except when I started to notice that most, not all but most, terrain builder projects would not export WRP (CTRL-E) anymore.

I tried to track down this issue that what causes it, but all I can come up with the info at hand is that some source files which were present in the previous pathing are now gone and terrain builder flips out. I would list is a bug but have no idea how to reproduce it (other than moving project from C: to D: for example, but still makes no sense that one project is broken while another works fine).

So yeah, I've been re-compiling those projects but also downloading bunch of satellite textures from ArcGIS using terra incognita. Actually got few very nice satellites compared to maps.google source so that's good.

Also I have been relaxing a lot by playing on PMC Gaming computer while PMC DevSurf is processing all sorts of terrain tasks which takes hours.

Pretty much same old past week, downloading ArcGIS world imagery satellites, compiling terrain builder projects and the files. Only difference is that I didn't got anything done since friday (basically thursday night) because I got sick (high fever), but today monday I'm good again and work continues.

Same old same old. Downloading ArcGIS world imagery satellite textures with terra incognita and compiling few terrain builder projects. My PMC DevSurf computer has been working 24/7 but way more lighter workload than previously, there has been couple of days that only thing running was terra incognita.

It is been so long since the last releases and so much have been done... but also forgotten (lacking changelogs) that I'll need to do a complete "inventory" of the terrain project progress soon. Most likely I'd have bunch of terrains ready to release but "I don't realize it" heh, yeah I know it sounds crazy

One thing in my mind right now is those terrains which had overlap and I redesigned them smaller or the few which got shifted bit apart, they obviously need the possible airfield runway elevations leveled once again. But that is not too bad of a task.

Sorry I don't have anything more specific to say for this weekly update. Let's see what next (err, this) week brings...

Finally completed all terra incognita ArcGIS 2 meters / pixel satellite texture downloads. In the future I might download 1m/px too but we'll see when the time comes.

Unfortunately as I've been playing for weeks CMANO and now Cold Waters on PMC Gaming computer, I've lost track of what terrains I edited, its been really shameful not to keep good changelogs. Basically I've just started terrain builder to generate layers or the other related long processes and then just disappeared playing CMANO heh.

Did not edit anything this past week but started to re-organize terrain projects, like changelogs and what is the current status, which satellites (google vs arcgis) is used etc, basically just refresh my memory what is the status.

Why? Well since early may I've spent way too much time just playing Cold Waters, CMANO and hanging out in my PMC Gaming computer totally losing track of what I've done because made the mistake of not keeping detailed changelogs.

I won't be making that mistake ever again.

Usually I start some satellite texture download, terrain builder generate layers, converting png to paa, binarize etc very long process and then I'm off to play games on Gaming computer for hours and hours. Yes its very relaxing way to handle those huge terrain processes, but eventually when you are not "hands on" so to speak, you lose track of what you've done etc. Kind of difficult to explain. Oh and obviously when I just start these processes and disappear, I am not doing any actual editing by hand.

This situation kind of sucks, feel like been lazying way too much, feel really shitty actually...

So unfortunately I'm going to stop these weekly updates as I've been too lazy to edit, no point of giving updates about nothing, heh.

Just completed ocean depths fixing in mass scale on L3DT. Dropped the coastline to -5m and then further out in the ocean dropped to deeper -50m depth.

Extensive in-game tests pending but the -5m is one of those depths you can still see the bottom satellite texture color and -50m is that deep dark blue ocean. The very detailed coastline editing need to be done in buldozer but that is huge task (long story) and might not be needed for these "fly boy" terrains anyways.